Worship

Technology is the great equalizer and bridge builder to just about any kind of challenge you will face. As a pseudo-techy, I want to suggest the backing tracks offered by Aaron Hill at http://www.fruitionmusicstore.net. Aaron collaborates with www.multitracks.com to provide you with expanded musical support once enjoyed by larger sized congregations. His tracks range from simple backing tracks to Stem Tracks, accompaniment tracks and play-along tracks to help augment your musical needs whether you are using a partial, full size, or no band at all.

As we begin 2015 at Life-Changing Worship, we are enjoying a United Kingdom invasion. Malcolm Cox (Thames Valley, England) has composed for us an outstanding 6-part series entitled "Worship Matters"; Martin Mboteh and Mwamba Bennett (Birmingham, England) have written a practical piece about some of their team's creative approaches to worship; and James Hanna (Belfast, Northern Ireland) has written a great article on developing worship in a smaller congregation.

We are pleased to honor some of our long-time music ministry leadership with lifetime achievement awards.

The list of dignitaries includes Joe Galeota, tenured Professor at Berklee, and incredible partner; Dr. Sandra Morales, a world renowned musician and artist who received her Doctorate in Musicology at Harvard University; Carl Alleyne, choreographer to the stars and gifted singer and inspiring leader; James Cafferella, the heart and soul of the Boston music ministry; Cheryl Murphy, a quiet but consistent heroine who works behind the scenes to ensure stability, she humbly and graciously allows others a place in the spotlight, while choosing to work unseen and in secret.

As worshippers and worship leaders, we want to experience everything that God has to offer through our times of individual and corporate worship. With this thought in mind, we have collected - from conversations with worship leaders around the world - a growing list of great worship resources: from books and webpages to articles, instructional videos, teaching devotionals, and much more. Check it all out on the "Helpful Stuff" page of Life-Changing Worship.

Just a quick posting to let you know some updates and to solicit some materials from worship leaders using effective ideas. Lifechangingworship.com (LCW) has continued to add resources, video lessons, new song tutorials, articles, outlines and more from a growing number of worship leaders around the world.

We use the word ‘staff’ loosely, as none are paid for their efforts on the Life-Changing Worship Webpage (hereafter, LCW). They are all volunteers who selflessly give of their time and talents to keep our content fresh and our page up-to-date and easy to navigate.

When the church gathers to worship, great things happen. I know. It happened to me. Almost exactly 30 years ago I walked into a Sunday service of the Central London Church of Christ (as it was then). I'll be honest, the quality of the song leading was woeful (wrong starting notes, singing off-key, vague direction etc.). And, although I knew some of the hymns, they were all sung to the "wrong" tunes. Added to that was the absurd absence of instruments! Here I was, a classically trained musician, a conductor of choirs with a degree in music, a singer, pianist and french horn player, sitting in a less-than-impressive musical environment. My reaction?